Prisons are Environmental Killing Fields
Speech to Green Theme Environmental Panel in Portland, Oregon October 21, 20211
Hello, there! My name is Bryant Arroyo, currently residing at State Correctional Institution, Coal Township, Pennsylvania.
Today, I would like to thank you for the invitation to participate and share some insights with all the Environmental/Social Justice activists.
To give you an idea of where I’m geographically located, I’m in the thick of the Eastern Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania.
Of course, the geography of prisons shapes the lives of those inside and surrounding them in ways affecting our overall health and health risks to the point of developing the insidious monster I call CANCER! Speaking of CANCER: Did you know that I’m incarcerated in the heart of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, which is considered the Number one, highest rate of cancer clusters in the nation, surrounded by several state prisons, including Mahanoy, Frackville, and where I’m presently housed at, SCI Coal Township coupled with two federal prisons—Allenwood and Lewisburg, totaling five prisons located within this region.
Right now, I would like to take this opportunity to pose a very interesting and peculiar question. Do you happen to know what is a “Superfund Site?” A “Superfund Site” is a polluted place where the law provides money from the U.S. government to clean up areas that have been polluted with dangerous substances but allows the government to demand money in the courts of law from the companies that made the area dirty.
What if the government knows the land is polluted, toxic, and uninhabitable but deliberately refrains from publicly declaring it poisoned land? This is the government’s biggest secret that the prison industrial complex utilizes to locate and construct the building of prisons throughout the nation. Did you know that 600 U.S. prisons are built on top of, or are surrounded by toxic mine dump sites where profit is heavily emphasized over the value of human life?
The staggering 2.2 million prisoners, generating a wealth of private revenue for the expense of being housed in federal and state prisons located within three miles of a Superfund Site is tantamount to receiving a death sentence! This compels one’s conscience to wonder why the government doesn’t prevent any prison from being built on toxic, polluted mine sites?
Pardon me, but I’m forced to quote the corporate raiders/destroyers reply to the nefarious inactions of the government’s failure to identify toxic, polluted, and uninhabitable land because, as they state, it is, “Economically Feasible” to build prisons on top of poisoned land sites, instead, of having to pay to clean it up. Makes dollars and (sense) cents, right?
This brings me to share with you another political economic strategy which benefits their (white) rural communities—it is called “gerrymandering.” That is, “the action of changing the borders of an area before an election so that one person, group, or party has an unfair advantage.”
As an example, if I’m from Philadelphia and I’m sent to S.C.I. Coal Township, according to the Census Bureau I would be counted as part of the Coal Township population for the purposes of receiving government funding for their particular district, which benefits their local community. Just another way to keep the funds in their pockets, and out of the communities we are from.
What should people outside know about environmental racism in Pennsylvania prisons? In speaking for the minority of the prison population, environmental racism is seen in various forms primarily because people of color are the majority-minority of the prison population. Herein, lies the issue. We all know that statistics prove disproportionate impacts of health risks on communities of color. If Blacks and Latinos were incarcerated at the rate of their white counterparts, the prison population would decrease an astonishing 40 percent overall. With a number that significant, we can’t turn a blind eye by permitting the corporate raiders/destroyers of mankind to continue to build these prisons on, or surrounded by, toxic, polluted, uninhabitable mine sites.
As a final thought, awareness, and education, are the first steps to ending environmental racism in prisons because the sad truth is that a great percentage of inmates and even their families lack the awareness of their toxic grounds.
As an environmentalist, I must protest that the corporate raiders/destroyers have to continue to build prisons on toxic lands, at the expense and exploitation of the disproportionately Black and Latino population.
The Face and Voice—Inside the Nation of Prisoners
Peace and Solidarity, Bryant Arroyo, #CU-1126
—Recorded October 13, 2021 by Prison Radio.
Write to Bryant Arroyo at:
Smart Communications/PA DOC
Bryant Arroyo #CU-1126
SCI Coal Township
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
1 Presentation for a Haymarket Webinar:
“Study and Struggle—Critical Conversation #2: Abolition Must Be Green”